I’ll take Heidelberg 1. So has the church.

“But you deny that salvation or the gospel is individual.” I deny no such things. I said that the meaning of “gospel” in the NT is an historical event, the coming of the kingdom. I’ve never said that salvation is not for individuals. I’m a trinitarian: One and Many.

Heidelberg Q. 1 is not a definition of the gospel. It is an answer to the question “what is your (s.) only comfort in life and death?”

So I assume that you think Heidelberg Q&A 1 should be written to affirm “the earth’s (should it be cosmos?) only comfort in life and in death is that the earth is not its own but belongs cosmically and universally to the earth’s faithful savior Jesus Christ. . . ” You see many more Christians than Campus Crusade for Christ use the language of individual or personal salvation.

The notion that God saves sinners who put their trust in Him alone is clear from Genesis 3 and from the First Word of the Ten Words. That “ordo” fact is not news and is not the gospel that arrived with the ascension of Jesus. What did arrive in the first century is fulfillment of the BASIS of that ordo salvation — but also a lot more.

AS I said before, I don’t really care if someone uses the word “gospel” for the Four Spiritual Laws or any other individualistic call to salvation. I don’t care until that common notion is used to deny what the NT actually means by the word “gospel.” Then the matter has to become important. Right?

Anthony, we have been through this before. I’ve never denied that the gospel should be preached to the nations. I’m still struggling though with what it would mean for a nation, not a family, but a civil society tasked with bearing the sword, with laws, courts, rulers, a constitution and the like, to rest and receive the passive and active obedience of Christ.

Well, Jim did call postmillennialism the gospel. I happen to agree that it is the gospel truth – Christ’s death and resurrection is for sinners out of the nations, and for the nations themselves. If you wish to call it theonomy, go ahead. But, is it more than that – is is the presupposition upon which the Westminster Confession was written: The Solemn League & Covenant between England, Scotland and Ireland – the three nations, was the basis upon which our Scottish forbearers went to the Assembly of Divines. They were, to a man, establishmentarians. Most were Presbyterians, some were Erastians, some were Independents, but they all saw the Gospel as a public proclamation to the nations. The Episcopalians were the Same. The Romanists and Eastern Orthodox the same. THe Lutherans didn’t reject it. Only the anabaptists held to what is being said by some here. I’m glad to have such strong Presbyterian sectarians on my side!

We’ve already been here, and done this before, back when Dr. RS Clark was, quite ironically, mocking the idea that the Nations were under the Covenant of works! Over on Hart’s Secular Faith discussion. One of the posts (my response) can be seen here, but the rest will pop up if you go here too:
http://deregnochristi.org/2007/03/31/the-covenant-of-works-and-the-state/#comment-575 (I suppose you may have to copy and paste it into your browser).

The Gospel is for the nations as well as families and individuals. De Regno Christi, Brothers!

I’m well aware that people commonly use the word “gospel” to mean the Four Spiritual Laws and other ways of approaching individual sinners with grace. I don’t mind that, until it comes up in a discussion like this, where Biblical categories do indeed matter.

The fact that there is no Q&A in Heidelberg or WLC about this is TOTALLY IMMATERIAL. Fact is, those men took theocracy and postmillennialism for granted.

Rev. Chellis, Please drop the Joachimite charges, would you? It’s nonsense, and if you don’t know that it is, you should. And if you don’t know that Christian Reconstructionism was anti-political and exhaustively proclamatory in its method, then you know nothing about it and your statement that you have any familiarity with Rushdoony is called into question.

Associating me with modernism is not quite going to work, since I am vastly more conservative and take a vastly more strict approach to the Bible than any of my interlocutors in this discussion. It’s the OPC and PCA that have moved in gnostic modernist directions with their anti-temporal readings of Genesis 1 and their rejection of Biblical chronology, just to mention two of many dimensions.

Perhaps I should say that those who move from Rushdoony to Kirk, from Biblical Law to Natural Law, and from Reformation eschatology to Augustinian neo-platonism are ON THE ROAD TO ROME!! Would you say that was fair of me?

You-all asked where those who have been bunched as “FV” people have criticisms of latter-day Reformed thinking. Well, I’ve tried to give some. Just trying to be honest here, and answer your question.